Turn and Talk with Brain Quest

Turk and Talk has been a buzz word in education for a while now. Every year this is a practice that many of my students struggle with. The conversation skills and confidence needed for a successful T&T can be intimidating to a 7 year old! I've noticed only a few of my students are truly capable of sharing their ideas clearly and then listening while their partner does the same. I decided to work some practice into our Morning Meeting with the help of Brain Quest.

I get so nostalgic when I break out my Brain Quest cards. I LOVED these things in elementary school and my students do too. They love the trivia and the randomness of the questions. I love how the silly questions trick them into talking to each other! Ha!!!

You can grab a set of Brain Quest questions at most educational stores but I swear every yard sale has them! Mine came from another teacher that switched grades and was tossing them. Turn trash into treasure in the form of turn and talk! (Can you tell I have been working on an alliteration resource?)

Tomorrow is Friday! We made it! 

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Enjoy your winter break!

Happy Little Classroom Challenges





Oh, Bob. 

I had a much different class this year than my first year as a teacher.  I had a mix of levels, most of my students being  kindergarten-first grade readers. I teach second so it felt a lot like instructing at three different grade levels. This is an experience I think most (all) teachers can relate to. I also had the ESE cluster and a fair number of undiagnosed students that needed a lot of attention both academically and emotionally.

It can certainly be time consuming to differentiate activities among students that you are 1. Preparing for rigorous unit tests, more complex reading, and 3rd grade state testing while 2. Working on sight words, basic phonics principles, and poor oral language skills with others. It takes creativity. Especially if you're also managing students with behavioral issues and trying to find activities for, and ways to reach, students that don't love school in general.
 

Because a big percentage of my schools' population live at or below the poverty line, I see a lot of kids that grew up in households where parents might not have been around to read nightly to them. The parents worked two jobs or maybe they couldn't speak the language. Sometimes both. That lack of "lap time" really effects a child's ability to view themselves as a student I think. If they haven't grown up with warm memories of a particular book being read to them, it seems harder for them to connect with reading like some other students that had the privilege of mom reading-them-to-sleep.

I felt challenged a lot more this school year and I left (for maternity leave) with a new perspective on what it takes to really teach.  Some days I wondered if I had the patience to get through (nope). Other days I felt accomplished. 

If you're still here (thanks for staying!), let's talk goals...

I have two goals I know will be on my long list of "areas for improvement":

1. Differentiate word work better! 

- I loved the spelling inventory from Words Their Way because it really gave me an idea of where to start with word work but I struggled a little bit with how to form groups effectively. I want to get a system down next year that will work like clockwork. 

2. Get on the floor! 

- Getting back to the "lack of lap time" I was talking about before. Next year during independent reading, I'm going to get on the floor more with my kids that can't read and read to them and with them. Yes, I do this during guided reading and read alouds but I feel like this one-on-one time might work wonders. I know for some it will be the closest thing they get to having a book read just to them so it's worth a shot. 

The biggest challenge of all will probably be leaving on time each day to get home to my babies!

How do you manage so many different levels of learners?

Finding Evidence in Reading Passages

This school year is over for me and it's only February! Being home on maternity leave has given me the opportunity to keep my 3 1/2 year old daughter, who's been in preschool since she was 2, home with me and the newest little one.  Since my leave backs up into summer we will have a good amount of time altogether. Some have called me crazy but so far so good on the newborn/preschooler front. (And I get my teaching fix working with my little girl on her sight words, seasons, handwriting, math, etc, etc.)

I did however make the mistake of sending her to school for one day before deciding to keep her home with us and boom! she (and I) caught a cold. Nothing new to a #teachermom amirite?! Having a newborn and a cold is a new plot twist though. Imsotiredhelpme   

Being on maternity leave has also given me a head start on thinking about what I want my classroom and curriculum to be like next year.  Okay, obsessing over what I want my classroom and curriculum to be like next year. I have created a new word wall (and word wall activities), and homework club printables.

I love my purple ombre word wall!

Something I did find pretty effective this year compared to my first was using more passages for students' independent work instead of a book from their book baggies.  I still made sure they had plenty of access and time to delve into Diary of a Wimpy kid for the 42nd time, but these days, kids really need exposure to articles and passages. They need to search the text, reread, site evidence... and all the other testing buzz words we're sick of hearing. Sad but true, these babies need to be comfortable with the fact that you aren't always reading for enjoyment. You won't always be reading content that you're interested in. Sometimes you're reading just for the straight up knowledge. 

Don't get me wrong. Reading for enjoyment is what I hope all of students are doing at school and at home! I love the idea of Flashlight Friday for reading time, buddy reading in the classroom library, and of kids building memories with books. {I will always remember and love Sideways Stories from Wayside School!} The reality is though, that they also need to be comfortable with printed articles and passages. But hey, finding evidence is passages can be fun too right? Right? ... RIGHT? Anyone? *this is when you desperately bust out the highlighters, glitter pens, colored pencils, and balloon animals for students to underline their answers in the article*

 

At my school, my amazing team and I have created all of our unit tests for reading. This gave me pretty great practice with creating relevant (to common core) and rigorous test questions. The kind a student might see on a standardized test (ew). I wrote ten passages with text-dependent questions to use in my small groups, as assessments for standards, and as test prep in my own classroom. If you're looking to build your students' reading response skills this resource might be helpful for you too. Check out the bundle HERE or by clicking the picture below.  Four FREE passages are available in the preview.

 

Do you use reading passages in your room or mostly books?